Promoting Oral Health Through the Medicaid Benefit for Children and Adolescents

Oral health services are critical to children’s health and overall well-being. However, many states face challenges, such as dental provider shortages, in ensuring access to high-quality oral health services for Medicaid-enrolled children. The Medicaid benefit for children and adolescents offers states a critical platform for addressing these challenges and providing children the dental preventive and treatment services they need.
This NASHP webinar features a federal perspective from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on opportunities and promising strategies for states to leverage this benefit to better meet the oral health needs of children. This is followed by a conversation with Medicaid officials from Maryland and Texas about initiatives they have launched to improve delivery of oral health services in their states using the Medicaid benefit for children. Participants learn about these states’ strategies for getting Medicaid-enrolled children the oral health services they need, key decision points that led states to their approaches and practical steps toward implementing them.
This webinar is the third in a series on the Medicaid benefit for children and adolescents. In conjunction with this webinar series, NASHP recently launched a Resource Map to disseminate state-specific resources and information about strategies that state policymakers and Medicaid officials can use to deliver the Medicaid benefit for children and adolescents.

Speakers:

• Laurie Norris, Senior Policy Adviser and Coordinator of the CMS Oral Health Initiative
• Michelle Harper, Deputy Director, Office of Policy, Medicaid/CHIP Division, Texas Health and Human Services Commission
• Susan Tucker, Executive Director, Office of Health Services, Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene